Historians scorn claims over Thomas More's cell

Historians have demolished the claim that a small white-washed cell at the Tower of London, which opens to the public for the first time today, was the last prison of Sir Thomas More.

To mark the millennium, Historic Royal Palaces, which manages the tower, will launch guided tours of the cell, and a display of historical material including the hairshirt worn by More, one of the most likeable figures in English history.

Visitors will be told the room is where More was held prisoner for 14 months, and that he walked from there to his death on Tower Green on July 6 1535. However the official Tower historian, Geoffrey Parnell, said: "There isn't a shred of evidence that More was ever held there."

More, who was canonised a Roman Catholic saint in 1935, was beheaded after he fell out with his patron Henry VIII over the act of supremacy, introduced in Henry's determination to break with Rome, divorce his first wife and marry Anne Boleyn.

More, who had been chief justice and lord chancellor, made his last jokes as he mounted the scaffold. He asked the tower governor: "I pray you, see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself."

There has been a tradition that the lower cell in the Bell Tower was More's prison. It was furnished earlier this century to resemble a chapel, with a kneeler, candle holders, and a portrait of More. A former governor, Chris Tyler, regularly invited a local order of nuns to pray in the cell.

It has never been open to the public because it can only be reached through the Queen's House, the private residence of the governor in More's time and now. It is now being opened to celebrate the millennium, as part of the London String of Pearls festival of riverside institutions.

However Dr Parnell, and the historical researcher Stephen Priestley, an expert on early manuscripts, have been tracking More through reams of documents on Tower history, and can find no evidence that he was ever in the cell, though he was certainly in the Tower of London. "There is no evidence at all that he was held in the Bell Tower, and some reasons why he was not likely to have been," Dr Parnell said.

Mr Priestley said: "It is really very frustrating because there is so much documentation about his imprisonment, his letters, details of his visitors, details of his interrogation, and you would think one of them would mention where he was held. But there is nothing."

The mystery deepened when Mr Priestley found an inventory of prisoners, tower by tower, taken on the day of More's execution, which does not mention his name. It is known that he was a prisoner there, because an earlier inventory mentions the cost maintaining him and his servant.

Thomas More was born in 1478, son of a London lawyer. When he became lord chancellor, the highest office in the land, he was renowned for his piety as well as his erudition and wit. With his head on the block, More moved his long grey beard out of the way, saying: "It were a pity it should be cut off, it has done no treason."

Henry commuted the original sentence of being hanged, drawn and quartered to beheading, and when he heard news of the execution, is said to have broken off playing cards and berated Anne for causing the death of a good man.

Dr Parnell and Mr Priestley believe the origin of the belief that he was held in the Bell Tower is because More's confidant, Archbishop John Fisher, executed on the same day, is known to have been held in the upper chamber.

"There is a record of More going up stairs to visit him, and I think people just assumed he was in the cell downstairs," Dr Parnell said. He believes the stairs connecting the two had already been demolished. He has already established that the chamber displayed as Anne Boleyn's was not built until two years after her beheading.

He thinks it is more likely that such an important prisoner would have been held, like Anne's daughter the young Princess Elizabeth, in the decaying and long since demolished medieval palace. He can only trace the Bell Tower tradition back to the 19th century and it seems likely the veneration of the cell as a shrine began in 1885 when More was beatified by Rome.

Mr Priestley said the documents showed the authorities were anxious to keep More and Fisher apart. More's pens and ink were confiscated when he persisted in writing to Fisher, and he wrote his last letters, including a moving one to his favourite daughter, Margaret, on the eve of his death, with a stub of burned stick.

A Historic Royal Palaces spokeswoman admitted: "We cannot be 100% sure that More was held in the Bell Tower, but it seems very likely"

Dr Parnell said: "It is the sort of story that everyone wanted to believe, but I think they just made an inspired guess."